1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to child safety seats for use in vehicles. In particular, it relates to child safety seats that have integrated illumination devices that can be remotely controlled from the dashboard of the vehicle or by a portable mode control.
2. Background Art
The concern for the safety of small children and infants when traveling by automobile has resulted in the development of numerous safety devices. While certain devices, such as seat belts, are useful for people of all ages, they do not provide a complete solution for small children and infants. As a result, special devices have been developed to accommodate this group of users. Principal among these has been the development of customized child safety seats which are designed to protect and comfortably secure small children and infants while they are in a vehicle.
Initially, a parent would place a child's seat facing forward in the front seat of the automobile. This would allow the parent, when driving, to closely monitor the child by merely glancing over to look at the child in the adjacent seat. Even when driving at night, the proximity of the child in combination with the limited illumination coming from the dashboard of the vehicle allows the parent to adequately monitor and view the child without any additional illumination.
More recently, safety concerns over the placement of a child's car seat in the front of the vehicle, due to impact danger from the dashboard and/or danger of injury from activation of an automobile air bag, has resulted in the requirement that the child's seat be placed in the rear seat of the vehicle. Placing the seat in the rear of the vehicle has improved the level of safety provided to the child or infant. However, while improving overall safety, the remote placement of the child's or infant's seat in the rear of the vehicle has resulted in increasing the difficulty for the parent when attempting to monitor the child or infant.
One problem associated with the placement of the infant's or child's seat in the rear of the vehicle is that the parent must take his or her eyes off of the road to look back at the infant. While the parent could look in the mirror to see the child, it would be difficult to see the child in the dim light of the back seat. This is because the remote placement of the infant's or the child's seat in the rear of the vehicle makes it more difficult to use the illumination provided by the dashboard light which was effective when the child or infant was sitting in the front seat of the vehicle. It would be desirable to have a method of illuminating the infant or child so that the parent could monitor the child while driving, even when the child is sitting in the rear seat of the vehicle. Likewise, if adequate illumination were available, the parent could easily monitor the child with the vehicle's rear view mirror.
Of course, a typical vehicle will have overhead lights that can be turned on by the driver. However, use of the overhead lighting in a vehicle entails several disadvantages. First, the overhead lighting in a vehicle that would illuminate the rear seat would also be bright enough to interfere with the driver's view of the road. Second, the brightness of the overhead light in the rear of the vehicle would potentially wake up a sleeping child or infant. It would be desirable to have the ability to turn on a low-level or soft light that was sufficient to illuminate the child or infant for monitoring, but not bright enough to interfere with the driver's view of the road.
While addressing the basic desirability of using car seats for small children and infants, the prior art has failed to provide a car seat which provides sufficient illumination to view a child in a car seat mounted in the rear seat of a vehicle, and which does not interfere with the driver's view.